Here is a great opportunity for extra funds for your group. Since walkathons are one of DoJiggy’s specialties, I think that if you’re planning a walkathon you may stand a good chance at winning one of their grants. Application are due Nov. 15. From their press release:

Boulder, CO (Oct. 27, 2009) – Online fundraising software services provider, DoJiggy, today announced a call for grant proposals for their DoJiggy Giving™ program. DoJiggy Giving supports nonprofits and community organizations through the donation of in-kind software services as well as a percentage of the company’s annual profits. This year the company plans to award five or more organizations with cash grants in the amount of $500 – $1,000.

Just for disclosure, I am not an affiliate of DoJiggy but took a look at their software. It could be a nice tool for you to organize your event, worth a look. For more info on software, see my older post, Online Fundraising Tools for Walkathons.

If your walkathon event lasts more than an hour or two, you can make a bundle from concessions! A couple tips:

Get donations from local vendors as part of your sponsors program, in exchange for plenty of publicity. You may be able to get much of your walkathon concessions inventory for free.

Be sure to keep an exact tally of what you purchased and how much of it you actually sold. If you have a walkathon every year, you can use those records to vastly reduce wasted food. You can even keep your records in a spreadsheet on Google Docs so that any new concessions chair can easily have access to all the old info.

If you offer freebie items like popsicles or hot dogs, you can use the walkathon lap card to keep track of what the walker has already received and what they still have coming.

Roger Carr, author of Charity Walks Blog, has invited me as his first guest on the Charity Event Success radio show. The interview will take place on Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 2 p.m. Eastern. We will be discussing the topic of Planning for a Successful Walkathon. There are several ways to listen to the conversation:

You have a cause you are passionate about

Whether it’s your school, church, or an important charity, this is something worth funding and it’s up to you to figure out how. How can you really do justice to your cause? Are there other goals on top of fundraising? How can you make the most money, create a great atmosphere of fun and community building, and keep it all organized and positive?

Would you like a walkathon planning mentor?

If you are organizing your walkathon on behalf of a school, church, or nonprofit group, this book is here to help. It offers what I learned by organizing and participating in twelve different walkathons. The goal is to help you avoid the risks and stress of trial and error by laying out all the planning details for you.

What’s in The Walkathon Guide

The Walkathon Guide is 102 pages long. It’s about 5% wisdom and 95% timelines, checklists, and materials that you can copy for walkathon publicity, registration, soliciting sponsors, and getting volunteers.

It has a chapter about early decisions and what to do right away, as soon as you decide to hold your event, followed by a list of committees needed, their start times, and how many volunteers per committee. Then there are chapters with goals, dependencies, timelines, and notes for each individual committee. There are seperate files you can hand to committee chairs to keep everyone in sync. There is a long appendix with copy-able files, in MS Word format where you can actually cut and paste, for publicity, registration, donor letters, and volunteer recruitment. There’s another appendix listing technology ideas and options for using the latest tools for your walkathon.

I set the price very low so you don’t have to think too hard about price, at $14.95 including all the extra files. You can download it and have it right away.

When you organize a walkathon, job #1 is to get volunteers. With a bunch of great teams on board, walkathon planning falls into place naturally. Start getting volunteers months before the walkathon. Focus on team leaders but the more you can fill the teams, the easier it will be to get those leaders. Put out signup sheets everywhere you can.

Here is a table showing typical volunteer roles. If your walkathon has other volunteers, please add them by commenting (click on “comment”, below). This is based on a walkathon with about 300 walkers, from 8:30 AM – 4 PM, so you can adjust accordingly.

When organizing a walkathon you will be well served by good online fundraising and organizing software. I’ve been scouring the web for the best online fundraising tools. I still have more research to do. However I’d like to tell you about a few options in the mean time, in case you are already deep into your walkathon planning.

This is worth doing because of time savings in collecting pledges, and also may well increase your total fundraising income by making it easier for those who prefer paying online to writing checks.

Whatever you choose, you’ll need a dedicated volunteer with strong technical aptitude, and time, to set up your system. As the walkathon chair you should not also handle the software unless you are very comfortable with online projects because this is a big job in itself. Instead let someone from the group be in charge of just online fundraising.

1. One of DoJiggy’s products, DoJiggy Pledge, is specifically designed for pledge driven events so that your walkers can build their own pages and then collect donations online. It has a whole set of features ideal for walkathons. It is reasonably priced.

Also, DoJiggy has a great new resource page. It includes walkathon checklists and also a sample participation waiver.

I played with DoJiggy and was impressed with how much was included and also the frequent follow up from the company. I haven’t used it for an actual event so would appreciate comments from you if you have.

2. Here is a useful article that gives you a good start in looking at other technology options; “A Few Good Tools for Online Distributed Fundraising” by Stella Hernandez from Idealware, March 24, 2009. She covers about a dozen options and gives a framework for choosing.

3. Finally, if your group is doing more than just a walkathon and online fundraising, and needs more generalized tools for group communication and organization, you might want to try the groupery. It’s free. They give you a nice online community building platform and also a supportive group for leaders of active volunteer organizations. It collects payments from group members, and organizes volunteer shifts, and has a host of other features. I used to work there. They are very dedicated to making you successful.

Write down your goals for your walkathon. Then, as you plan you can make sure you are addressing them. If you have a committee, get together and decide which goals apply to you:

To make money? If so, how much? If you average that amount out per person, is it a reasonable expectation, or do you need to augment the event via sponsorships, concessions, recycling, a raffle, a silent auction, or other money raising efforts?

To build community? If so, what fun ideas can you implement to encourage lots of interaction between people?

For health awareness and exercise? If so, how can you give positive reinforcement for the walkers’ efforts?

To gain public awareness for your cause? If so, what will you do to draw the maximum amount of attention to your walkathon and the reason you walk?

Brainstorm a bit. Is there anything else you want to be sure to achieve?